So many ways. Here are just a few, but this has been discussed in other threads, so there’s more (from me and others) if you can find it:
- Reading the wiki, look through the nations and their “character archetypes” and see if there’s one that grabs you: Archetype - Empire
- Sometimes PD runs plot specifically for characters certain archetypes, e.g. for a while Bravo characters in the League were getting some of their income at each game-event in the form of a dodgy street-drug instead of coins… your game may be more interesting if your character fits some archetype.
- Start from a personality and see where it fits: build a character around that.
- Perhaps choose some aspect of your own personality and either switch it off or take it to an extreme. (Don’t make it totally unrealistic though: someone with zero caution or self-preservation wouldn’t have survived long enough to reach adulthood and come to Anvil.)
- Start from a distinctive bit of costume you have: put it on, see how you feel, what attitude fits with it…
Choice of skills (if you want to buy any before starting play) and of Personal Resource are not worth thinking about too much until later, after you know who the character is and what general sort of things you want to do. And the skills etc. might end up depending partly on other people, e.g. a character who wants to cast rituals and joins a coven will need to coordinate with the other members on what rituals they master.
I don’t know the examples at the end, but from your description both of those would fit really well in the League. Matching it against possible archetypes, the first could be a bravo or a cicisbeo or a mountebank… or two of those, or even all three at once. One of the League’s Egregores (thus definitively on-brief and fitting the style and culture) is a cicisbeo and mountebank; he goes by the name of Harlequin. Alternatively, you might be able to make it work in the Brass Coast.
Your second one could also work as a bravo (you might want to look at joining a mercenary company in play… or potentially some other kind of group, either in play or OOC-in-advance) or maybe something in the Marches… ooh, or perhaps in Dawn, if you can arrange to be part of some noble’s “house”, working for/with the nobles. That’s the nation with the clearest hierarchy in its social set-up.
Of course, “Robin Hood” makes me think Marches, since the concepts for that nation draw a lot from (common conceptions of) the England of Robin Hood’s era: longbows, pikes/bills, stolid stubbornness, down-to-earth practicality, harvest-time celebrations etc.
Oh, and on the “intriguing past”: it can help with giving you a sense of who the character is, and getting into the characters’s headspace, having a feel of being that person rather than yourself… but don’t expect other people to be all that interested. It might happen, but don’t count on it.
Other than the things already mentioned, you might want to take (current) size of the nation into account, e.g. at present Wintermark has a huge number of people, which has its good and bad points if your character is in that nation.
Sounds awesome, but you’d probably get more joy and satisfaction from some other piece of kit that you could make instead, unless for some reason your character is going to be carrying it around the field a lot. You can use modern luggage/rucksack to bring stuff to the event, then keep it out of sight during the game. Perhaps make a nice pack if you still have time and money after you’ve sorted out OOC essentials and the IC stuff that your character will use more than the pack.
The wiki is huge so reading all of it is probably not realistic, but some parts of it are essential. Somewhere on this forum, there’s a thread where some of us gave our opinions on which parts of the wiki a new player needs to know. There’s not all that much: the OOC rules, the basics of the setting, the basics of your nation’s culture… it’s fine to play a character who doesn’t know much.
Edit: found that thread: What and how much should I read up on?
Not much of a hierarchy, but some characters have managed to gain Imperial Positions, e.g. Archmage of Night, Grandmaster of the Shuttered Lantern, Senator of Sarvos, Empress of the Empire, General of the Wolves of War, Cardinal of Pride… there are a hundred or so such positions. As mentioned, in Dawn there’s the clear (but not hereditary!) distinction between the Nobility and the Yeofolk. The law is enforced mostly by player-character militia, but the incorruptible magistrates who judge cases are played by members of crew (like civil servants).
Your character could certainly be executed if judged guilty of a sufficiently serious crime: see the wiki section on the law.
Kidnapped? Well, sometimes in battles the barbarians take prisoners, and there have been rescue missions to rescue prisoners… or ransoms paid, in at least one case. Oh, and there was the time a character was highly obnoxious to a bunch of other characters, who kidnapped him, took him away, beat him up (OOC did some nice bruise make-up) then delivered him back to his group’s encampment wrapped up in a smelly old carpet.
(Bear in mind the gameworld setting is gender-neutral, so the “damsel” aspect is irrelevant.) You can’t count on being able to arrange for the story to go that way, and if it’s at a battle then your character might well be killed rather than captured (or might just bleed to death) but yes, it is a thing that can happen, and you can work to raise the odds of it. Also, there have been a few times when PD has offered such opportunities to players in certain categories, though generally not for your first game… e.g. if your character’s “resource” is a Small Military Unit that was fighting alongside one of the Empire’s Armies that had things go badly during downtime (the time between the game events), then before the next game you might be offered the option of having your character start the game as a prisoner, and on the Friday evening there would be a “skirmish”, with some (typically a few dozen) player characters going through the magical Sentinel Gate from Anvil to wherever your character is, to attempt a rescue. Or the same could happen if your character has, say, a farm or a business in a region that has been conquered by enemies of the Empire.
Final piece of advice: bear in mind that you’re taking a risk if your enjoyment of the game depends on your character faring well and succeeding at the character’s goals, whatever those might be. If you design your character with that in mind, you can have a great time regardless of whether things go well or badly for the character.
(Mind you, sometimes that’s a risk worth taking. For example, my character is a violinist and a member of a theatre troupe/coven in the League, and I wouldn’t enjoy that if the music and plays were not generally well-received by other characters: IC success and OOC satisfaction are linked there.)